Tag: issues

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some Lightroom 4.2 performance issues. I finally finished the job, despite the issues. To fix the problem, I had to go through several things that were recommended on the Adobe support forum. Including setting up a new catalog, optimising the old one (several times), making sure OS and everything was up-to-date (everything was), making sure there were no preview renders going on (there weren’t), making sure Lightroom wasn’t writing XMPs automatically, increasing the raw cache size from 10GB to 50GB (does that even make sense on a catalog that holds less than 5000 pictures?!)

The good thing: LR4.2 is now performing at acceptable speed.

The bad thing: I have NO idea whatsoever, which of the above steps actually made the difference and at this point I don’t have the time to do any deeper analysis on the problem.

And neither should I have to.

The whole incident leaves a really bad taste. I love Lightroom. I’m passionate about Lightroom. I’m actually so passionate about it, I teach Lightroom. It allows me to do things I couldn’t do just a few years ago. Lightroom has become the hub for 100% of my photography. But please, can anyone explain to me why a point update from 4.1 to 4.2 should require some customers to go on a week-long hunt for a solution to a problem that wasn’t existent on the same system with the same catalog just a minute before the update?

What’s going on at Adobe? (oops, I think I have a a deja-vu) – your guess is as good as mine. Let me try: maybe Adobe didn’t finish testing 4.2 before they released the software to the general public (sure feels like it to me). Or maybe the beta tester base was too small (which could have resulted in them not catching the big bugs). Or maybe Adobe’s quality standards have been dramatically lowered over the last year (I sure had that feeling when the 4.0 update killed my tone curves back in May).

I’m getting really tired of this. Adobe, please don’t make me go through this again when you release 4.3.